How Does a Facebook Page Work?

Ah, Facebook. The social network that you may have been resisting, stuck your nose up at, and accused it of being for your children (who probably won't friend you anyway, so don't worry). Or, you may be totally addicted to your Friend Feed, commenting on your friend's photos and walls, checking out the links they post, and yes, throwing snowballs at each other with a single click, because doing so in this way is just so odd.

Facebook started as a way for college kids to keep tabs on each other. Then older kids started getting in on it, and some of these older people had businesses. So, instead of posting thier faces for their names, they would post their logos. Well, doing that - posting a business in the place of where a person is supposed to be - is against Facebook's Terms. If something is against Facebook's terms, then they will very likely remove your account. I have a few friends whose accounts go disconnected because of this very violation.

To answer this growing demand of posting businesses on Facebook's community, they developed the Page. A Page is a place where you can post your logo, name your business, write a description of it, state its mission, add a newsletter signup, post photos, have discussions, and much more (as much as your brain can think to put on there). It is basically free advertising on Facebook's platform (for the time being).

So how does a Facebook page work? Well, the fundamantals of it let you view "insights", or traffic stats on people who click on your page, post a discussion topic or reply to a discussion, numbers of new fans, numbers of fans you just removed, and more.

Which brings us to "fans." A person in Facebook can have "friends". But a Page can have "fans". You can be Susie's "friend". If Susie has as boutique, called The Cat's Meow, you can do  Susie the favor of becomming a "fan" of The Cat's Meow. The Page will show how many fans it has, and list them. Your face will show up in that list of fans. Who knows, Susie might decide to send her fans coupons from time to time. ;)

A neat little feature that Facebook rolled out recently is that a Page can become a "fan" of another Page. Ha! So, my one company, Katie James, can be a fan of this company, Tin Shingle, who is then fans of Nomie Baby, PopJudaica, WELLalarm, and many more. And, for all of Tin Shingle members, we made it a member benefit that if a member had a Facebook Page, then we would make the Tin Shingle Page be a fan! So come see our Facebook page, become a fan, and see who else our page is a fan of! Lots of Tin Shingle members, we can tell you!

And if you have a Facebook page, or if you make one after reading this post, tell us about it in the comments below!

PS: Here are step by step directions on how to make a Facebook page that I put together on my techie blog, ThatITGirl. Share yours with us!